Code.org's Q2: Biden’s support and new records

In the last quarter, the Code.org team has continued our work on three fronts: education, marketing and advocacy. Here’s a brief update:

Education - 700 new computer science teachers

This summer, we’re training 700 teachers to begin computer science classes this fall. Being our first year, I’m eager for their feedback. So far, 71 percent of these teachers call our workshops the “best professional development” they’ve ever received! We owe thanks to our curriculum partners, especially the Exploring Computer Science team for these results.

Our K-8 course is now in 31,000 classrooms, reaching 1.3M students. 40 percent girls. That’s double the average female ratio in computer science! We’ve also established 100 Code.org Affiliates who will train 10,000 elementary teachers across the United States this year. Look our for our three new elementary courses coming soon.

Marketing - The Hour of Code is coming, again!

The Hour of Code has reached 39 million students. For this year’s Computer Science Education Week (Dec 8-14) we’re aiming to reach 100 million students. This is a worldwide goal so we’re seeking global partners to spread the grassroots campaign.

A record year for AP Computer Science

When we released our first viral video, we timed its launch with course signups for Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science and promised donors we’d impact enrollment. Preliminary results are finally in: a record 25 percent increase, making computer science the fastest growing AP course this year, with its first improvement in diversity in recent history.

Advocacy - 3 new states count computer science

Since my last update, Florida, Illinois and Ohio all changed policy to better support computer science. Now, more than half of the US population lives in states where computer science counts. Change in New York, California and New Jersey is still on deck. Above all, we owe thanks to our advocacy coalitionMicrosoft, CSTA, College Board, TechNet, NMSI, AAUW, Google, Stand.org, and others.

One more thing… the Vice President’s support!

After meeting with us, thanks to the wonderful help of T4A.org, Vice President Biden delivered this 2-minute pitch about Code.org to US governors at the National Governor’s Association conference. He summarized our first year, urging all states to adopt computer science. This was a great milestone in our ongoing effort to get political leaders talking publicly about computer science education.

The worldwide response to this movement continues to amaze me. As always, thank you for your support.

- Hadi Partovi, Code.org